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How user personas and stories can increase sales from your website

01/01/2018 | Consultancy & Strategy | 10 minutes

Giving your customers what they want may seem obvious, but many businesses fail to get this right online. Taking a user-centric approach to developing
or reworking your website can pay dividends and there are some simple techniques that can help you to get it right.

By learning more about your customers and creating personas and user stories, you can make your website better suited to the needs of your customers. This
can result in significant benefits to your business, both directly and indirectly.

What is a user centric approach?

When creating your website the temptation is to represent your business. It's easy to structure the site in the same way your company is structured and
to plan user journeys based on 'real life' transactions in order to deliver your goals.

The problem is, your users may not know about your business or care how it's structured. They just want it to be as easy as possible to find the information
they need and complete their tasks.

User-centric web design focuses on the needs of users first. This might result in a website that's structured very differently from your business, but
makes it simple for customers to find what they need. To achieve this, you need to know who your customers are and have an understanding of their wants,
needs and preferences.

What are the benefits of user-centric web design?

Making your site work well for your users can give you a competitive edge. Improving the online experience can encourage your customers to:

Stay on your site for longer

Engage more with your content

Buy, enquire or sign up online.

Get it right and this can mean more sales, more enquiries and happier customers.

How to get started with user-centric web design

The key to effective user-centric web design is understanding your users. You need to get a sense of who they are, their motivations and desires and what
they want from your business.

User personas and user stories are a valuable way of defining your audiences and what they want. They make it easy to create a shared understanding of
who your customers are, both within your business and with any external suppliers. It possible to go into a lot of detail about each customer group,
but even businesses with the smallest budgets and least time can create outline personas and user stories that have value.

What is a user persona?

User personas are fictional representations of your key customer types. A persona is a single page that captures the personality, likes
and dislikes and needs of a specific group of customers. By creating an imaginary person with a name and personality to represent this group, it becomes
easier to consider their requirements as you plan your site.

To create user personas, think about the different types of customers that are most important to your business. Identify the traits that are common to
each group and build a persona around them. You can then refer back to these to test your design, UX and content.

What are user stories?

User stories are a way of defining requirements based on the needs of your audiences. Each story follows the same structure, describing
the type of user, what they want and why they want it.

User stories always follow a common structure:

As a [TYPE OF USER]

I need/want/expect [TASK]

So that I can [GOAL]

User stories are really useful in defining what you need to include on your site because they focus on what the user is trying to achieve rather than on
specific functionality.

To create users stories think about the goals that each of your personas has and the steps that they need to go through to achieve these goals. As you're
developing the site you can test that each of the user stories is being delivered and therefore the needs of your users are being met.

3 ways a user centric approach can increase sales from your website

By taking a user-centric approach you're giving your customers what they need. This keeps them happy and builds trust in your brand, making them more likely
to buy or enquire. As a result your website will be more profitable.

There are three key benefits to taking a user-centric approach:

Improved user experience

Better relevance

Increased conversion.

Together these benefits help your users, support your SEO and deliver results for your business.

Improved user experience

Giving your customers a good user experience (UX) keeps them happy. This will reflect positively on your brand, helping to improve your standing and build
trust with your customers. Get it right and do better than your competitors and you are likely to win repeat customers who will advocate for your business.

Better relevance to your users

Considering your users throughout the process of developing your site will ensure that the content is relevant and appropriate for their needs. This will
result in your users being more engaged, spending more time on your site and absorbing more of the information.

The direct benefits of this are better educated customers who can better appreciate the benefits and USPs of your products or services, but there are also
indirect benefits. Increased relevance and better engagement will also boost your search engine rankings. Search engine algorithms are constantly updated
in order to make them behave more like humans. This helps them to find users the best results. By putting your customers first you're doing exactly
what search engines want – providing people with the best, most relevant information.

Increased conversion

By providing your customers with a site that meets their needs you make it more likely that they will convert. Whether that's an increase in newsletter
sign ups, enquiries or sales, this can have direct benefits to your business.

Taking a user-centric approach to web design has business benefits

By focusing on the needs of your customers, you can develop a site that drives better engagement and delivers increased conversions. This can have a direct,
positive impact on your bottom line, but also benefit your business indirectly. Happy customers are much more likely to recommend your business, building
your customer base through word of mouth. It's also likely to boost your SEO, increasing the visibility of your site and growing your customer base.

For advice on taking a user-centric approach to your new website, or reworking your existing site to better meet the needs of your customers, contact Urban
Element.